Found this site through a comment on Firebrand years ago (before they were part of ESPNBoston). Found Firebrand through YFSF. Found YFSF from Baseball Musings. Prolly, goes further back, but I can't remember.

I do very much hate the Yankees, passionately. Almost as passionately as I love the Red Sox. For years I only hated on the Yankees because I live in NY State and it is assumed that by living here you should be interested in only NY based teams. Then in the '03 season, the two rivals played and I was this close to see the Yankees get burned. I was looking forward to the disappointment it would bring to all the smug, arrogant, snot-nosed Yankees fans who kept shoving their WS count in my face as if it had any bearing on current teams, plays, pitches, or the outcome of any series.

I didn't pay any attention to the '04 season as I was mostly a WS fan. When the Sox played the Twins in '04 ALDS, my friend Brandon was in town and wouldn't do anything that conflicted with watching the series. I was hooked.. Big Papi, Millar, Pokey, Coco Crisp, Cowboy Up, Doug Mintkewiezckjsdklkdjhlksdg, Manny being Manny, Trot, Foulke, the "Curse".. and my buddy Brandon was full of the spirit, living in boston at the time and he just said he "felt it" that year. All of these things were explained to me during the last few games of that DS. I was instantly hooked. THe idiots had my interest. And they had a chance to beat the Yankees. The hope that they would be defeated shone brightly.

I had read about Schadenfreude on Boston Dirt Dogs much later on. (the only post I can find is from the 06 season, but that doesn't seem right) I seem to recall not remembering how to spell it or what it was called a few days later and doing a search for something along the lines of "taking joy in others failures" or somesuch. WHen I found the actual word then I did a search with that plus red sox it brought me to the joy of sox. I don't even think I caught the pun for like, a week >< I read either the first or second (with a year between the two its hard to tell) posts tagged with Schadenfreude and I was hooked on the blog from then on. I liked that someone else was noticing when the Yankees fucked up. The tabloid covers were a real treat. The scathing quotes from NY's own media!

JOS is one of the top blogs on my iGoogle page, the first place I go to read about a thrilling Sox win the next day (or that night, to read the Dirty Water reactions! especially when I've had a few brews!!!). The first place I go to find the comfort of other fans after a stunning loss. (If I can bear it). And every fucking time THEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE YANKEES LOOOOOOOOSE! (big enough, large enough, catastrophically enough for a cathartic schadenfruede post.) I don't comment very often but I do read quite frequently. Thank you Allan for all you've written over the years, for all the schandefreude posts, the off day music posts, all the posts that keep me interested in the offseason, even if there are fewer of them.. I may not watch every game, but I can catch up on every one by coming here.

I'm still a little surprised that I did not enable comments until April 2005. One probable reason was not wanting to "debate" with anyone about the political stuff I was posting. I split the political stuff off onto a second blog in January 2005.

Game threads did not emerge until 2007 and it took until August for them to really get rolling. (We topped 1,000 comments for ALCS 5 and got 1,356 for ALCS 7.)

And I went four years before I had to moderate comments. That is interesting, since I had a decent-sized readership by mid-2007.

I want to know who has been regularly reading the blog the longest. (A lot of the earliest commenters are no longer around. Looks like the first non-anonymous comment was from Daryl, aka singapore sox fan.)

Followed the Sox my whole life, but didn't really use the web to do it (beyond redsox.com) until '03, when my friend suddenly started talking about "this site that knows when trades are gonna happen" (BDD) and "this message board" (SoSH) and "this funny dude" (Boston Sports Guy). So I found myself watching the A-Rod trade talks unfold on Dirt Dogs, which I've loooong since boycotted. And at that time, in his links section, there was "Joy of Sox--the right Sox blog if you can stand the left leanings" or something. I was like, Hey, asshole, some of us LIKE the left-leanings, and anyway, that's how I found JoS. (Along with Bambino's Curse by Ed Cossette--how many people out there remember that one?)

"I'm still a little surprised that I did not enable comments until April 2005."

The first year of my blog was 2004, and for a long period, Blogger didn't even have comments. (Or I just couldn't figure out how to turn them on. Or something.) I finally started getting some around August '04. And my first time linking to JoS in a blog post was 9/1/04.

I used to be more active on the old Projo board in the late 90s and knew of Allan from there. We watched a Sox game together at the Riviera around that time (with another Projo denizen, forget the name, maybe Riff?). Not sure exactly how I discovered the blog, might have been browsing the predecessor Pedro site? But, I think I was here pretty early: I can see footprints from 2003, and was there in time to enter (and win!) the first Final Record Prediction contest.

Since I got set up with an RSS feed I suspect I've read almost every post, though I'm a very rare commenter.

Franco may go back the longest. He also won the W-L contest in Year 2, I think!

I saw some games at the Riv with Riff, but what was the name of the place on 20th (?) Street, kind of near Broadway? Maybe that was with some SoSHers. Someone who posted as Nomar was there and I'm pretty sure it was this game, April 13, 2001 (Manny's 10th inning single wins it off Fruitbat).

(I think I saw Opening Day 2002 at the Riv with Riff, where the Jays battered Pedro.)

I think it was through iGoogle. I was setting up my home page with various topics and searched for Red Sox on their list of sites. JOS was the first one, so I subscribed. This would have been in 2007. I did not start commenting until the apostrophe debate regarding the Boston Herald headline.

For years I only hated on the Yankees because I live in NY State and it is assumed that by living here you should be interested in only NY based teams.

Allan seems to hate all local teams for this reason. He used to hate the Knicks and the Giants, although he doesn't follow either basketball or football, and now appears to hate the Jays, the Raptors, the Argonauts and the Leafs - or if not hates them, just enjoys when they lose.

I love when the Jays lose, but that is about it for Toronto teams. Don't really care about the other ones. It would probably be neat to be here when the Leafs got to the finals (or won the Cup).

I got real pleasure when the Knicks or Giants blew games or fucked up when they should have rolled over someone. It was odd.

I can still vividly remember sitting in bed on June 1, 1994, watching Reggie Miller fuckin destroy the Knicks in Game 5 of the Conference Finals. Laura was asleep and I was freaking out as he drained one 3-pointer after another, all the while making choking motions and talking trash to Spike Lee. He had the entire game in the palm of his hand and he could do no wrong. It was surreal. I know parts of that are on YouTube, but I'd love to see the whole quarter again on DVD.

"No Idea's Name Night is legendary among Manhattan's young and downwardly immobile. Each night we post a new name; if it's yours you drink free from 5:00 to 11:00. ... You will not be eligible to receive free drinks if you show up alone."

Tonight: "Anphy"

?

They have normal names, too. (Matt, Maria, and Bill coming up this week.)

Most likely I found your site around the time that I was thinking about a site of my own, which became FenwayFanatics.com in March 2004, and I probably came here from BDD. I wouldn't say that I became a regular here until three or four years ago.

You have a loyal reader for as long as you continue this blog, Allan. :-)

Great question! first of all, thanks for the awesome job - love it. I married into a Red Sox family in 98, and stuck in Indiana without any Sox on tv I pretty much depended on the internet; at the time I was reading Billmon's Whisky Bar [he was a Sox fan] - that was the first blog I ever read, and then found Bambino's Curse and Cursed to First Dirt Dogs and JoS all about the same time I think. Somehow that combo made all the pain of October 2003 bearable, and the joy of 04 even better. [And I don't agree with Steve's politics either but am glad he publishes my cartoons!] CHEERS!!

I'm glad this worked out! Interesting stories for sure, I suppose I should share mine.

During 2007, after watching a few years of NESN, I was amazed at how repetitive Orsillo had become so I decided to google one of his signature phrases to see if anyone else had commented on/discussed his frequent "catch phrases" or sayings. Fortunately enough, Allan was, and went so far as to make it a drinking game!

I think that post has my first comment on JoS (interestingly enough it has the old names and avatars too) and after that, I checked it occasionally to see if this 'redsock' dude kept it current. Sure enough, it was current and damn good, concise, no bullshit writing. So I stayed :)

Poz: "When does a hitting streak become news? ... I say that for local fans, a hitting streak probably begins around 10 -- that is, if someone on your favorite team gets a streak to 10, you probably would like to know."

Billmon is totally a Sox fan; after Aaron Boone I left a comment there to the effect that as a new - and foreign - Sox fan now I kinda knew what 86 felt like. It was very cathartic for me to write that. And Billmon totally shot me down - he was like, dude you have NO FUCKIN IDEA what 86 was like, this is NOTHING,etc. Hilarious in retrospect. He's almost definitely right, but I can't help feeling that the horror of 03 has been gigantically reduced in fans' minds by what happened after; if the Red Sox hadn't won in 04 and 07, I think by now 03 would be rising up there.... But Buckner trumps them all, I know!

I think I saw the link on Dirt Dogs or maybe it was a Google search. I just know that I was bored at work and wanted to find a good Sox blog to read. This became my favorite; it's the only Sox blog I read daily. I rarely comment, but I'm always here. Nice work, allan.

p.s. - I like the left-leaning stuff that still trickles in from time to time. It's nice to know that I'm not the only one. Sometimes I feel like baseball is just overrun by Schillings, or even worse, Luke Scotts.

As a non-commenter but a regular reader, I have followed Alan since the Projo Red Sox board where I used to post as YardSox. I also joined him in regular battle with Lou D. on his YankeeTradition blog. I agree with Alan and another Red Sox blogger - Lyford at Lyflines on about 99% of Red Sox analysis, so these are my two stops for Red Sox news. I think I have followed this blog since its inception.

Alan - on another note, I am starting to clean up old stuff around the house including lots of VHS tapes of Pedro pitching - including his first game against the A's in Oakland, which I attended when I lived out in San Francisco. Are you still interested in capturing them? It may take a while to go through everything, but I plan to later this year.

I also joined him in regular battle with Lou D. on his YankeeTradition blog.

Oh, man!!! Did I get into it with him? (I would have thought it wasn't worth it.) Is he still around? He must have been fun to deal with (eventually!) in 2004! ... And good ol' Warren, though he was a Sox fan! YT grew out of Art Martone's Off The Wall columns/postings. I remember back when Art put up contributors' posts once a day. And to get chosen you had to offer something substantial.

Collier Brothers Alert: I have a huge box of printouts of Art's stuff from like 97-99 (or more) that I should scan as PDFs.

I am amazed the amount of "lurkers"who have posted, and wonder why they don't post more often. Believe me Allan's post are reason enough to read , but I believe the comments make it interactive and much more fun......

I am amazed the amount of "lurkers" who have posted, and wonder why they don't post more often.

I don't get it either, but it seems to always be the case. Joy of Sox has more than 1,000 visitors per day, and how many people comment - maybe 20 or 30? Wmtc has 500-700 visitors a day, and maybe 12-15 regular commenters.

I'm only guessing on the number of commenters for either blog - I've never counted - but certainly it's a small percentage of total readership.

It's probably at least partly a time thing. If you're a heavy blog reader, you couldn't possibly participate in the community on all of them - you'd never do anything else.

All I remember is that I discovered there's such a thing as a blog after the '04 win, looking to share a bit of the glory with anyone (being a baseball fan in Israel is a fairly lonely road), even if only by reading what others are writing about it. I think it was sometime during 2005and that the first one was Seth Mnookin's blog, and I branched out from there. The regular tour included YFSF, Jose Melendez, Rob Bradford's blog, and of course JOS (these may be chronologically wrong, since I think that Bradford's blog, at least, didn't start until '07 or '08. I lurked here for a full season, I think, before first commenting. I enjoyed the group, and half-knew most of the regulars' "personalities". I'm pretty sure I started joining in on game threads sometime during the '07 season, when I was working in the US. Those days I had to spend way too much time in front of the computer, with nobody around and nothing active to do, so my regular tour of Sox blogs expanded, and my commenting and gamethreading became almost daily.To the question at hand, I'm gonna go with Seth Mnookin--> Jose Melendez--> Joy of Sox. That's my best bet of how I got here.

And since all the cool kids are doing it, I'll go back to Ofer. I commented under that screen-name (does it count as a screen-name if it's your real name? And do people even use the word screen name, still?)

Oh, I just realised I didn't even finish my last comment. The last sentence, sans parenthesis, was meant to be "I commented under that screen-name all of '07, and that worked out well."

Yes! I watched two games of the series against the Spiders with A & L- both losses, I'm afraid. Before I check it out, I'm gonna say it was games 2 and 3. The first one was an extra-inning game that was lost by Gagne (and everybody knew it was over the second he walked on the mound), if I'm not mistaken. I almost said Timlin, but I was mixing it up with Game 2 of the '08 ALCS, when the exact same thing happened against the FKR. Anyway, I remember very well that all the games I watched while in Toronto were losses, and then I was sent back to Sandusky, Ohio, where I watched the last 3 games (and wins...) of the series at some shitty bar.

OK, so it was partly true. Gagne actually didn't even get the chance to blow the game away- he put two men on in the 11th, and was replaced by Javier Lopez and later Lester. Those two did most of the damage. But it doesn't change the fact that we just knew it was over when Gagne stepped up...The second game was a 4-2 loss that I remember nothing about, even after reading a bit about the main events.

Nope. You were here for Game 1 (Sox win 10-3; you arrived a bit late; first post 8:33) and Game 2 (Sox lose 13-6 (11)).

Oh, yeah! You're absolutely right. I very distinctly remember myself working up in a rollercoaster station while checking the score of game 1 often, and that Beckett was dominant. So I figured it couldn't be game 1, and during game 4 I was at a Porcupine Tree concert, so I thought it had to be games 2 & 3. But it turns out that that was Game 1 against the Angels, and not the Spiders. So the Sox won! Hurray!

Wow. I can't remember, but I think I started reading during the '04 Series. Or maybe it was the next season. I found the blog by doing a Google search on how many games Big Papi had won on the last swing.

I don't remember either. I think I started reading this blog during the 2004 season, when I could not get enough of Red Sox content. This blog fed my incessant need to know everything about the team, and helped me think that perhaps I was not the only crazy person who was living his life day by day, game by game throughout that roller coaster season.

Yes, but I am threatening to change AWAY from my real name. I am always running counter to the cool kids and the trends.

But with Ish becoming Rob and Ofer returning to Ofer, I may just cave to peer pressure and keep things as they are. If SoSock, S1C and WestCoastSox start going by their real first names, I may not have the strength to become Catcherfan after all.

Someone mentioned Art Martone's column from the ProJo back in the late 90's, and I read that daily too. I lived in Atlanta from '97-'99, and that site became my lifeline to Red Sox Nation. After the '98 season I started my website, and sometime during '99 probably is when I traded links with Allan's Pedro site.

Can't remember when I found JoS specifically, maybe linked from the Pedro site, maybe from Jere's blog (but then how did I find his?)

Originally I'd visit maybe once a month or every couple of weeks. I do know I linked to this post in my "Papi should be the MVP" rant at the end of the 2005 season. And I remember emailing my brother a link to the Glossary, probably around that time, because it reminded me of a lot of the nicknames we used to give players growing up (though I can't remember the origins of how we came up with "Cheeseburger" for Ivan Calderon).

I don't think I started reading it (or any blog) on a daily basis until the '08-09 off-season when I started my own blog. Total laziness, but once it was in the blogroll on my own page it was just a click away instead of having to remember to find and look up a bookmark like I did before I had my own blog.

Last year, when participation in my own attempt to do game threads dwindled, that's when I started joining the game threads here.

It was early in the 2006 season. I discovered this Yahoo service that would send you a text message based on an RSS feed -- just the headline and the first couple of sentences. (Kinda lame in the newfangled smartphone era, but at the time it was the coolest thing ever for me.)

This caused me to look for Sox blogs that would give me more of the game story than just a score alert. Back in those days you used to put the full line score at the start of each post -- and it fit into Yahoo's character limit for these SMS alerts almost exactly!

You stopped regularly doing the line score thing about 3 weeks into the season, but I stuck around :)

I had taken a hiatus in my interest in baseball for a decade and a half and really came back into getting into it at the start of the 2004 season (I'm very glad I didn't pin much on '03).

I started reading this blog in 2004. Going back through the archives, I remember various posts. I tried searching for my first comment here, but can't find a comment-specific search function and "nick" is far to generic. I know it took me a while to ease into commenting.

There are 4 other RS blogs in my RSS feeds, including Jere's, but there's nothing like this one.

I think I found JoS in '05. Not sure where from although I know it was linked somewhere. I haven't had time to comment much (Hi, guys!), but I'm still around and I hope to comment more often these days!

In the streams last summer Allan said that this must be a pretty special place (for a Jays fan to come thread with Sox fans). I didn't respond to Allen's point then - but this IS a special place, Joy of Sox is unique. (plus I'm not a Jays fan - perhaps a Jays Critic) Joy of Sox is a community which 'includes the absence' (?) of the chest-pounding that you find so much of in sports culture these days. Even the Schadenfreude label includes with-in it a tough-in-cheekiness.

I must concede living in the Toronto Maple Leafs media market for most of my life has greatly informed who I am in the sporting life. Harold Ballard, the deceased owner (1967-1990), by the trashing my faith one too many years in a row, proved to me the truth of the phrase often credited to P. T. Barnum, "there's a sucker born every minute".

So now I put my sporting emotions in a box and watch generation after generation of young Toronto fans invest faith - and feel some 'I told you so' solace each spring as the team somehow finishes lower in the standings than the year before; and as the 'Cash Box on Bay' continues ring up league record profits.

I'm jaded for sure, I'll not flow with the river again; it takes actual *Winning* for me to get my fan on. Sports for me has become about reasoned statistical analysis, learning something about the way the game is played, the economics of professional sport, and about the psychology of fans. No more flowing underground for this fish; I'm not being held under again. I'm flopping up on the bank. That water can drown you, you know.

Whether it be the Leafs or the Blue Jays, the way teams are able to manipulate this media market is interesting, but probably not unusual. But laying in a Marshall McLuhan-esque 'warm bath' with them is not my kind of mixed metaphor - not here in Toronto anyway, it's too familiar - I've been fooled too often - and besides, I don't trust the guys preforming the ritual...

But a virtual Boston - a place I'm not vested in, never lived in, and the planet's great hub of baseball writing; this I think, may be more myself.